Chapter 278 Umberto’s Ambition
Although the new warships submitted by the Royal Guarnizo Shipyard looked powerful, the construction of four main warships at one time also caused a fierce quarrel among the cabinet government.

Investing more than 100 million pesetas in the navy also means that the fiscal budget of other government departments will be reduced by a total of more than 100 million pesetas.

This is precisely the reason that has caused the departments to get into arguments. No one wants to have their financial budget cut too much, which would affect the department’s development plan.

In the end, it was Carlo who made the final decision and agreed to the defense department’s plan to build four ironclad ships.

The construction of four ironclad ships required 7280 million pesetas, of which the cabinet government contributed 5500 million pesetas and the defense department itself raised the remaining 1780 million pesetas.

Because Spain plans to launch a war against the Ashanti Federation next, the defense department’s military budget has increased by nearly 20% compared to usual.

It shouldn’t be a problem to squeeze out 1780 million pesetas, and the money doesn’t have to be paid in one lump sum.

After so many years of development, Spain’s shipyards have long since gotten rid of the embarrassing situation when Carlo just became King of Spain, when no shipyard had the ability to build ironclad ships.

In addition to the Royal Guanizo Shipyard, which is currently the largest in Spain, other shipyards in Spain that have the ability to build ironclad ships include the Valencia United Shipyard, the El Ferrol Royal Naval Shipyard and the Cartagena Shipyard.

However, these three shipyards are all managed and operated by the government. Except for the Valencia United Shipyard, where the royal family holds nearly half of the shares, the royal family does not have many shares in the other two shipyards.

The same is true for the El Ferrol Royal Navy Shipyard. Although the shipyard has the word Royal Navy in its name, it actually has little to do with the royal family or the navy.

The largest shareholder of the El Ferrol Royal Naval Shipyard is the Spanish government, the second largest shareholder is the El Ferrol City Government, and the Royal Spanish Navy only holds less than 10% of the shares.

It was named the Royal Naval Dockyard because the rise of El Ferrol was entirely due to the establishment of a naval base by Spain here. The earliest shipyard also belonged to the navy, but with the weakening of the navy, most of the shipyard’s shares had already been sold.

All the shipyards in Spain that have the ability to build ironclad ships are official, and private shipyards do not yet have the ability to build ironclad ships.

Ironclad ships are the most advanced warships of this era, and it is not easy for private shipyards to build ironclad ships.

Currently, the largest private shipyard in Spain can only build light cruisers, whose tonnage generally does not exceed 3000 tons, and are small and medium-sized warships.

In addition to taking small-scale orders from the military, private shipyards make money mainly from orders for civilian ships.

Although the tonnage of civilian ships is generally small, it doesn’t take long to build small civilian ships. As long as there are enough orders, these private shipyards can still make money.

As Spain’s colonies grew and some of them became larger, the maritime transport industry also prospered.

This also led to a golden period of development for Spanish shipyards. Especially with the support of the government, Spain’s shipbuilding industry has achieved some success and is ranked among the top in Europe.

Along with the shipbuilding plan, the class name of this new warship design was also determined.

The previous generation of ironclad ships was named the Restauration-class, while this generation of ironclad ships was named the Matador-class ironclad ships by the Spanish government.

The code names of the four Matador-class ironclads were HMS Matador, HMS Warrior, HMS Courage and HMS Indomitable.

The naming of the ironclad ships also shows how hard the Spanish government worked to shape the national spirit.

Carlo’s expectations for the Spanish navy and army are just like the names of these ironclad ships. The combined combat effectiveness of the Spanish navy and army can be weaker than those of the superpowers, but they must have the courage to brave death.

Sometimes courage is more important than equipment. If the equipment is the same, the side with more tenacious courage will be able to exert stronger combat effectiveness.

As the saying goes, when two brave men meet in a narrow road, the brave one wins. Carlo doesn’t want the army he has spent a lot of money and carefully trained to eventually become cowardly surrenderers.

Spain’s population is inferior to that of European powers, so it can only improve the combat effectiveness of its navy and army in this way to make up for the gap with other powerful countries.

The Spanish government still does not intend to keep the construction plan of these four ironclad ships secret.

Even with these four ironclad ships, the Spanish fleet was still not strong enough to shake the British. Not to mention shaking the British, there was still a long way to go before the British Royal Fleet.

The British controlled India, which brought a large amount of fiscal revenue to the British government every year. This also led to the British government investing an astronomical amount in the construction of the navy. In the past two years alone, it built three ironclad ships.

Although building three ironclad ships in two years may not seem like a huge investment, the problem is that the British almost never stopped building.

So far, Spain only had five ironclad ships at most, and the British only needed four years to build all the ironclad ships owned by the Spanish Navy.

This is also the reason why Carlo did not intend to keep it secret. Even if the British knew that the four ironclad ships built by Spain were first-class combat forces, they did not have to worry that the Spanish Navy would pose a threat to the Royal Fleet.

Unless Spain built more than ten ironclad ships at once, even the British Empire would not be able to afford such an investment, let alone Spain, which had even fewer colonies.

Although Spain had four shipyards capable of building ironclad ships, the government did not plan to build these four ironclad ships at the same time.

After the funds arrive, the Royal Guarnizo Shipyard will first build two ironclad ships. As the largest shipyard in Spain, the Royal Guarnizo Shipyard can accommodate up to three ironclad ships to be built at the same time.

However, the number of employees in the shipyard is limited, and coupled with related restrictions, the more warships are built at the same time, the longer it will take to build each warship.

If only one ironclad ship was started, it could be launched within one year at the earliest and no more than two years at the slowest, with an average speed of about one and a half years.

But if three ironclad ships were built at the same time, the launch time of each ship would be delayed to more than two years, and it would even be very likely to be as slow as two and a half years. Even if only two ironclad ships were built at the same time, it would be impossible to achieve an average speed of one and a half years. This also meant that if Spain wanted to launch its new warships, it would have to wait until the second half of 1883 at the earliest.

The sea trials of the warships would still take a long time, and the earliest that the Matador-class ironclad ships could be officially incorporated into the Spanish naval fleet would be around 1885.

In order to save as much time as possible, the first two ironclads would be built at the Royal Guarnizo Shipyard, and the last two warships would be built at the Valencia United Shipyard and the El Ferrol Royal Naval Shipyard respectively.

Although the scale of the two shipyards is much smaller than that of the Royal Guarnizo Shipyard, because only one ship was built, the final progress was able to barely keep up with the progress of the Royal Guarnizo Shipyard.

It is expected that Spain will commission four ironclad ships at once between 1885 and 1886.

This also means that Spain was able to maintain its naval status until the pre-dreadnought era, and then rapidly climb the technology tree during the pre-dreadnought era, seeking to surpass the naval powers ahead of it.

Just as all pre-dreadnoughts became defective products once the dreadnought appeared, all ironclad ships instantly became leaky wrecks once the pre-dreadnought appeared.

As long as Spain can seize the important opportunity of replacing ironclad ships with pre-dreadnought battleships, not to mention surpassing the Royal Fleet of the British Empire in naval power, it can at least remain fourth in the world after Britain, France and Germany, and seek to surpass France and Germany.

Germany will also attach more and more importance to the navy, but at this time, they are not ready to challenge the naval status of the British Empire.

This also means that Germany currently has no plans to vigorously develop its navy, and Germany’s goal is only to build its navy to a level that matches Germany’s status.

France is even more needless to say. France has industrial and scientific research capabilities, but because it does not invest much in military expenditure, the French navy will eventually be surpassed by Germany. Spain also has the hope of surpassing the French navy in the era of pre-dreadnought battleships.

Of course, even if the pre-dreadnought battleships could not surpass France, Spain still had a chance in the dreadnought era.

Because of the importance attached to pre-dreadnought battleships, Spain did not plan to build ironclad ships after the Matador-class ironclad ships.

These four Matador-class ironclad ships were enough to ensure that Spain’s naval power remained among the top five in the world. The pre-dreadnoughts that came after them were the main battleships that Spain built vigorously.

This is also the reason why the Spanish government intends to make this shipbuilding plan public. If it does not make this shipbuilding plan public, Spain will have to wait until the pre-dreadnought era to build main warships on a large scale next time.

Revealing some plans to build main warships can effectively enhance national self-confidence, which is still very necessary for Spain at present.

As expected, when the Spanish government announced that it would build four ironclad ships in the next few years, it immediately caused a sensation among the Spanish people.

The former Spanish Empire on which the sun never sets relied on Spain’s powerful navy and vast colonies. Currently, Spain has built colonies of considerable size. If it can build a powerful navy, wouldn’t it be considered a barely revival of the former Spanish Empire on which the sun never sets?
If you think about it carefully, Spain’s current colonies are distributed in America, Africa, and Asia, so it is not wrong to call it the empire on which the sun never sets.

However, most of Spain’s colonies were relatively small in scale, making the so-called empire on which the sun never sets seem somewhat unworthy of its name.

Although the reputation is somewhat undeserved, the situation of Spain’s colonies is much better than that of many European countries.

Even the powerful German Empire currently has no decent colonies, not to mention weaker powers like Austria and Italy, which have no colonies at all.

What Carlo didn’t expect was that the news released by the Spanish authorities not only shocked the Spaniards, but also the Italian government.

As an ally of Spain, the Italian government is of course aware of the specific data related to Spain’s Renaissance-class ironclad ships.

The former Fuxing-class ironclad ship was also a first-class warship design in Europe at the time. Although it was not the most powerful, its comprehensive combat power was definitely ranked among the top.

Although the Spanish government has not released data on the latest class of ironclad ships, considering Spain’s good performance in the Renaissance-class ironclad ships, this new ironclad ship design must be a product with even better performance.

Seeing that Spain, controlled by his younger brother Carlo, was strengthening its naval construction, Umberto I was jealous.

After unification, Italy merged the navies of the Kingdom of Sardinia and other Italian states to establish the Royal Italian Navy, which became one of the top eight naval powers in the world.

At that time, the Italian Navy ranked among the top five in the world in terms of total tonnage, and the data on paper was quite good.

But as the crown prince at the time and now the king, Umberto I certainly understood that Italy’s current naval strength was bloated.

Before unification, Italy was divided into several states. Although these states were all very developed, how could a small state have the strength to build advanced ironclad ships?

Even if they had the technology to build them, they didn’t have enough money to maintain them. Furthermore, a single ironclad ship couldn’t protect their coastline; they needed a large fleet of several ironclad ships to protect their coastline.

This also means that most of Italy’s current naval tonnage is composed of small and medium-sized warships, a considerable number of which are coastal defense ships, or in other words, near-sea warships that are unable to conduct ocean-going operations.

More importantly, most of the warships that make up the Italian Navy were built more than ten or twenty years ago. The designs of the warships have long been outdated, and the naval guns they carry are even more backward muzzle-loading guns. In terms of shell loading speed, shell range and power, they are far behind the mainstream breech-loading guns of various countries.

Seeing that his younger brother was building Spain in full swing, this also aroused Umberto I’s own ambition.

He had no envy of Carlo, but he did have the genuine desire to emulate Carlo and build a strong army and navy for Italy.

Umberto I’s original plan was to rely on Italy’s own efforts to build a powerful ironclad ship, and then use the ironclad ship to arm the Italian fleet.

Since Spain already had the latest ironclad ship design, Umberto I changed his mind and hoped to purchase one or two ironclad ships from Spain to expand Italy’s naval strength in a more effective way.

(End of this chapter)